Hello I’m Ryan Nelson and these are the Globe Education podcasts
for Adopt an Actor. I’m here with Keith Dunphy, who’s playing
Macduff in this year’s production. And we’re now at the stage of
talking about performance. The play’s been running for a while, and
actually you finish a week on Sunday.

Keith Dunphy:

We do.

RN:

So lots to talk about for performance.

KD:

Yes, yes.

RN:

But going right back: how was opening night?

KD:

Opening night was very good, obviously, you know, there is that
thing with opening night, there is the nerves, you know, whatever…
as we call them, the press, the people with the pens and paper are
in. But it went really well, and I think we all held our nerves
really well, and it was a very very good strong show, and also the
weather was fantastic, it was a really good night. And I think all
in all people were quite excited by the show.

RN:

And obviously opening night comes at the end of a series of
previews. How important are previews for you as an actor?

KD:

Previews are great, they’re very important, in the sense of
that, before the powers-that-be come in to see what they think of
it and write about it, it gives us time to let the show grow into
what it’s going to be into the space, you get that time, you know,
which is great. So you get whatever you get, four or five
performances or whatever we got here, sometimes in other theatres
it’s slightly longer. So we had the time for Lucy [Bailey] the
director to be in every time in every preview and then in the day
working bits and improving and working on bits that made sense and
better for the production and for the space. So I think that worked
quite well for us.

RN:

Yeah. And obviously during that preview period it’s the first
time you’re with a sort of full live audience. Obviously the
audience is really important in any production, but is the audience
different at the Globe in terms of fact that you can see them?

KD:

Yes, I think that the audience are different here, it differs
from each performance. If you’ve two in a day, a matinee could be
very different to an evening. And what that is, is collectively one
audience when they come into the Globe will be… I don’t know, it’s
very strange but they could be I suppose, for the want of a better
word, a slightly rowdy audience, and that’s great, but they’ll
react in funny places and you’ll think “God”, you know! And you’ll
have that side of an audience. And then you’ll have an audience
that are just, certainly for Macbeth, which is fantastic
in the Globe, we had this a couple of nights ago actually, it was a
beautiful summer’s night, it was really still, and there wasn’t an
absolute peek out of an audience; they were almost like, I mean,
coming off I said to one friend of mine in the show “are they
there, or are they just like holograms?” But they were absolutely
so still, but obviously listening to the play.

RN:

Focussed in the moment…

KD:

Yeah, focussed in the moment, and really came to hear the play.
And that is a joy for us in that sense, that sort of an audience is
just brilliant, because they’re reacting right to what they’re
seeing and they’re following the story. So that’s how I think
audiences differ, you know. And then you’ll get sometimes, you
know, the school parties and they’re fantastic the children and
kids, you know, they’ll be talking to each other and eating crisps
and drinking cans of coke and getting bored and looking up at the
sky and wanting to leave and coming back in, but you have to deal
with all that, and stay in the story. But that’s part of the
Globe.

RN:

And has the play changed much throughout previews and opening
night?

KD:

I think it’s opened out, and what I mean by “opened out”: the
play, I suppose, after a number of performances a cast of actors
rest down, and feel they owned the play, and as the directors say,
it’s almost letting it go and giving it to the cast. So I think
it’s opened out in the sense that everyone is very confident in
their parts and really finding the space of the Globe, really
feeling it and opening it out into the Globe, which is all the
better for this type of play and this place.

RN:

And as I say obviously your last performance is Sunday week, do
you have any plans for afterwards?

KD:

Well, you know, actor’s life, up and down, in and out, I had one
or two auditions but nothing is come of it yet.

RN:

It’ll be a well deserved rest then.

KD:

Well maybe a well deserved rest, but there’s always that worry,
you know, “will I ever work again?” But hopefully I will!

RN:

And this is your second time at the Globe. Would you come
back?

KD:

I would, yep, I would.

RN:

Are there any parts you really want to play?

KD:

Oh God, sorry, I could name them out!

RN:

Oh go on, do!

KD:

Oh God, I don’t know, I always wanted to have a go of Iago, I
think I’d be a very good Iago. I don’t know, oh God, I could be
here all night. Well, I actually, I think I’ve always wanted to
have a go at Hamlet, but I think I’m getting too old to play
Hamlet, because I’m in my early 30s now, but it’s a part I’ve
always wanted to have a go of, if I ever got the chance. But that’s
a kind of a “Holy Grail” thing, isn’t it, if you know what I
mean.

RN:

You do manage to see a couple of older Hamlets now: David
Tennant.

KD:

Yes, David Tennant, I’ve worked with David, yes, older Hamlets,
yeah, if a director would back me, as they say. Oh, and there’s
another part I’ve always wanted to play, in Measure for
Measure, is Angelo. Being an Irishman, I always had a take on
his sort of priesty, which I think could work really well actually,
that oppressed kind of… I don’t know if people know the play
Measure for Measure, but there are parts that I would like
to have a go of, yeah. But I’d also like to do a few movies if they
came my way!

RN:

Well thank you very much for today and for your time over the
last months. It’s been a pleasure.

KD:

Thank you, I’ve really enjoyed it. And thanks for all the nice
letters and things I’ve received from people, thank you.

Hello I’m Ryan Nelson and these are the Globe Education podcasts
for Adopt an Actor. I’m here with Keith Dunphy who’s playing
Macduff in this year’s production, and today we’re going to talk
about tech week, which was a while ago now. But for those who might
not know I guess the first question is: what is a tech week?

Keith Dunphy:

Well, a tech week is very stressful for any actor in the land!
It’s basically where what you rehearsed in the rehearsal room I
suppose comes to life, and comes to what the show is going to be.
So, you know, there’s a lot of stress in trying to get the
technical side of things right, and the props, and make sure
everybody’s standing in the right place and everything is very
safe.

And basically with our show, because it’s quite a big production
of Macbeth, the tech was heavy for a lot of us. We have two, an
inner ring and an outer ring and I have to say that, for people who
haven’t seen the show, is basically they’re suspended over our
heads, with cloths hanging down and big long chains with balls of
fire and stuff like that, and so you can imagine it took quite a
long time to get that right, they rotate on a hydraulic sort of
wheel thing, and sometimes they can break down.

And other stuff, we have traps as well in our stage floor which
open, three of them, which are released from underneath the stage,
which can be quite dangerous. We’ve had one or two injuries, our
big man Macbeth himself, believe it or not, actually fell down a
trap during one of the performances and hurt his ankle four days
before press, which was very scary for the whole company. But
fortunately he’s absolutely back, fighting fit, and he’s in great
form. But there was a moment like that, which was quite scary, but
it is Macbeth and these things happen.

We also have a cloth which comes out over the groundlings and
they pop their heads up, so they’re kind of like stuck in hell, and
that’s suspended, roped and tied off onto sort of the rafters and
stuff of the theatre and all that kind of technical stuff
eventually came together to make a very (I think anyway, I’m
biased!) exciting show.

RN:

It is an exciting show! What’s it like moving from a rehearsal
room with four walls and a ceiling onto the Globe stage – wooden,
circular, no roof?

KD:

I have my own views on that. I mean: you can rehearse a play in
any rehearsal room, any play. But when you go to the theatre it’s
the next step, you’re onto the next thing and it’s entirely
different. Yes, of course you can rehearse your part and you know
what you’re doing and you’re sitting or you’re whatever you’re
doing, all your movements and stuff, but there is that extra thing
I think when you go to the theatre. I think a lot of actors, you
know, in the business they say you step up your game, you step it
up, it’s like footballers, the same thing, with the World Cup at
the moment, at the big moments you step it up, you go up that extra
notch when you hit the space and you gauge, certainly for the Globe
I think, you have to gauge your voice, for instance, which is very
important. And you can’t really do that in a rehearsal room, you
have to hit the space to do that.

That takes a bit of time, some people catch on quicker than
others with that, but eventually, I think our company’s actually
coping brilliantly I think with that, actually, really opening out,
and it does take a couple of performances to get the feel and the
level of your voice…

RN:

…Get that level…

KD:

... yeah, yeah, and where you don’t really have to be like you
know, bellowing it out, you can actually talk and be heard and you
know, in the Globe as well you have to be very courageous sometimes
to do that as an actor, just not even try to raise your voice, but
people will listen.

RN:

It’s a weirdly acoustic space as well, you can talk and somehow
the wood bounces it back…

KD:

Yeah, it is, absolutely and, I don’t know if you know, they’re
called the “sweet spots”. Sweet spots, for whoever’s listening now,
are where you can, certain places in the Globe where you can stand
and your voice can reverberate, as you say, off the wood, and it is
fantastic for the voices. You know, as you get an old, old veteran
like myself you start to know where those spots are!

RN:

I mean the other thing that you mentioned that I guess comes in
tech week – obviously you’ve had costume fittings before, but I
guess this is the first time you’re properly in your costume for
long periods of time. How important is costume to you as an actor
in terms of getting character and location?

KD:

I think, yeah, I mean, some people, you know, actors are
terrible, they sort of say things like “a good actor doesn’t need a
costume”, and blah-blah-blah-blah. But I think you know, when you
get your costume on of course you feel different, and certainly
because this is kind of, I suppose, it’s a medieval production, so
we have beautiful costumes. But when I say medieval, it’s important
I say for people that haven’t seen it: don’t think that it’s like
the “olde worlde” medieval, the girl that designed the costumes
[designer Katrina Lindsay] is an absolutely really cool and
brilliant woman and she’s kind of done, because you’ve seen it, a
trendy… there’s kind of a trendy thing in there as well isn’t
there, like you know…

RN:

Like fashionable medieval!

KD:

Fashionable medieval! I think we’ve made up a new word there
“fashionable medieval”, I like that. So yes, the costumes are great
and are lovely, and when I did my fitting I made sure that I had a
really lovely cool leather doublet that a lot of my other actor
friends are really jealous of. But I told them you’ve got to know,
that looks good on you.

RN:

Are you not tempted to take it home with you at the end?

KD:

Well, they won’t let me!

RN:

They won’t let you, it’ll have to go back into storage!

KD:

Back into storage, for some other guy that knows that’s a nice
doublet!

RN:

And the other thing I guess we haven’t talked about up to this
point is what the jig is like, and whether you enjoy that.

KD:

Yeah, well, the jig is great, I really enjoy it, the jig’s gone
down really well, and again our choreographer, Javier de Frutos, is
an amazing choreographer, he’s done loads of really high profile, I
mean, he did Cabaret in the West End, the musical Cabaret, I mean,
he’s like a really “how you doing?”, as they say, choreographer. So
when he was asked to do the jig he came up with his own take, so we
all, a lot of the actors, we all have great fun, because it’s kind
of like half boy-band, Boyzone, and that’s a joke, but you know
what I mean, it’s kind of like very swishy…

RN:

Bits of arm movement…

KD:

Yes, arms. So we do feel like we’re a bit like X-Factor as well
as like jig, yeah, it’s really cool.

RN:

Brilliant. Well, next time we talk, we’ll hopefully find out
about performance.

Hello, I’m Ryan Nelson and these are the Adopt an Actor podcasts
for the 2010 production of Macbeth. I’m here with Keith Dunphy,
who’s playing Macduff in this season’s production, and this is our
next interview about the rehearsal process where we’re going to
look towards the end of the play and where Macduff’s character
ultimately goes. One of the big scenes that’s quite well known in
Macbeth is the ‘England Scene’ [Act 4.3]. If you could just begin
by describing exactly what happens in it, because it’s quite
complex.

Keith Dunphy:

Yeah, well, in very simple terms, after the killing of Duncan,
the way that I see it is that Macduff makes that decision to go to,
he goes home to Fife and then he makes the decision to go to
England because there is no other way out. We need someone to come
back to get the tyrant out and to get a better leader for our
country in place, and he is the hope, really. So I go to the
English court to ask him to come home, and let’s take on this
tyrant and get him out. Through that what I see is a Malcolm that’s
testing me and also, which a lot of people forget, is a Malcolm
that’s actually very wise and very good and he’s actually got all
the attributes to lead well, to be wise, not a warrior king but
actually a good, governing king.

But in this scene he tests me, with stuff about avarice, and
about greed and about lust for women and all this kind of stuff,
and as Macduff, I’m that through line of the actual heart and
honour of serving my king and my rulers, and I’m not really taking
it, even though in the scene I try to take onboard what he says,
but try to come back at him with views saying, ‘You can have all
these things but this is what we really need: we need you to come
home’. So that’s kind of the start of the first half of it.

The second half of it, obviously the tyrant decides to kill all
his family and babies which is a horrible thing for anybody, I
think, to kind of take on board, especially if you have children; I
don’t myself but I do know people who have, and for your kids to be
slaughtered. I think, as an actor, the only thing I can really say
about the second half of it is you have to put it all up to the
gods, or up to fate, and you just have to go there. And that’s
actually easier said than done. If that makes sense.

RN:

Yeah, I think it does. This is maybe an unfair question, but for
Macduff, with that early part of the scene when he’s promising
Malcolm that they can accommodate his evil, and in the later half
of the scene when he discovers what’s happened to his family, do
you think for him it’s always been a choice between loyalty to his
country and loyalty to his family? Have those always been in
conflict for him?

KD:

I think so, yeah, I think definitely there is that conflict for
Macduff about loyalty to the family which is paramount, but in this
particular instance, and in this time in the story that we see this
man caught in this play, in a way it’s tough but he’s had to
slightly put that aside. That’s what kills him in that scene, when
he says “I must be from thence”, I must be from there, I could have
done something if I was there. But at the moment the crazy tyrant
that’s ruling the country needs to be got out. The family loyalty
slightly has to go on hold to get this problem sorted, so I think
that’s the conflict for him.

RN:

And then pushing ahead to when that conflict starts to be
resolved, there’s obviously the final act with the confrontation
and the battle. How is the fight choreography working for the final
scenes?

KD:

We’re going well, I mean, this particular production we’re up
against it with time, but we’re getting there, we’re getting there.
We’re working really really hard, me and Elliot Cowan, playing
Macbeth, to pull off quite a dynamic fight, but sometimes you just
need the time, so at the moment we’re just working with the fight
director and we’re coming up … we’ve just finally actually as of
today I think finalised a kind of a structure, and now it’s just
about repetition and about really really making those moves our
own, and making it look like to the audience that it’s quite
dangerous, but to us everything is quite safe. That’s the trick,
that’s when it looks great I think.

RN:

Is it quite set then, almost like key movements?

KD:

Yes, there’s a section of key movements in there, like there’s
one two three four five sections, so we know where we are and what
we’re doing at any given point, so everything’s nice and safe, but
the trick is to make it look like…

RN:

Like it’s spontaneous?

KD:

Yeah [laughs].

RN:

And with that final scene obviously… hope it’s not spoiling it,
but it leads to the death of Macbeth. Do you think Malcolm will be
a better king. You sort of hinted that he has some good qualities
in him in the earlier scene, but I just wondered what you think
will happen?

KD:

In our production I’m not quite sure, I mean, I think it’s very
interesting the way our director [Lucy Bailey] works, but she’s
very wonderful and bold like that, she’s still letting it up in the
air slightly, I think she slightly sees Malcolm as a puppet king,
in a sense that he is there but then he might slightly go down, or
he needs the backing of the nobles and the thanes and stuff.

RN:

And obviously has an English army invading, or occupying.

KD:

And he has an English army occupying, and he has the forces of
the English army at his will at the end of the play in a way. It’s
a really hard one because as we all know from the play it’s been
done a million hundred times, that some people do the stuff where
you know Malcolm is at the end and there’s this kind of new regime
coming in and playing it that way. I don’t think we, at the moment
quite see it like that but I think we’re leaning towards that
puppet king thing if that makes any sense, it’s left up in the air
slightly, for you to make a decision.

RN:

Wonderful, thank you very much for today, hopefully next week if
there’s time in tech week we’ll be manage to find out it’s like
moving onto the stage.

Hello and welcome to the second part of our Adopt an Actor
interviews with Keith Dunphy who’s playing Macduff in this year’s
productions of Macbeth. Now that we’re in the second week
of rehearsals we’re going to start to look at how character is
developing in the early scenes of the production. So I’m going ask
what key relationships does Macduff have with different characters?
How have you worked on that so far?

Keith Dunphy:

The Lennox character and I, the way that we are working is
putting Macduff in the start of the play as one of the thanes, the
head thanes; him and Lennox are forming a good relationship there.
So when they do come in to discover the body of Duncan (as the two
guys that come and knock with the Porter and stuff) there is
actually history gone on before that that you see.

RN:

Oh, what sort of history is that then, that they’re allies in
some way, or…?

KD:

Well, they’re mates, they’re friends. They kill people. In our
production so far we show Cawdor being killed on stage. First of
all tortured and then killed. Lennox and myself, my friend, we come
on to finish him off. But at the moment we’re working on a thing
that I choose to stand outside, stand watching it, while Lennox
finishes him off.

RN:

So when you get to that scene then where the body is discovered,
what sort of elements are coming out in how Macduff positions
himself in relation to the other characters? At what point do you
think suspicions maybe start to arise?

KD:

There’s a very clear point I think the text tells you the
suspicions start for Macduff’s character is, Macbeth says “I do
repent me of my fury that I did kill them”, the grooms, and I
repeat to say “Wherefore did you so?” (2.3.104-105). Why did you do
that? And I think that is a huge moment where he tweaks there’s
something not right about that. And obviously the fury of that
scene, because everyone’s so ... the best way to put it, their
heads, they don’t know where they are, the whole place is in a
rumble. But you know, the analogy sticking his head up over the
parapet for me, ‘There’s something not right about that’.

RN:

And then obviously you don’t necessarily see Macduff making
choices based around that - as an actor do you fill in the missing
elements between that scene and when you next see him?

KD:

Yes, yeah, the next time you see him is, as we call it, for the
want of a better word, the conspiratorial scene. Yeah, I mean… my
way of seeing it is after that, after he’s left that scene of the
castle - wherever he was, whatever way you want to see it - his
mind is going a million miles an hour. But he’s made one very
strong decision, and that is to go home, not to go and see the big
man being crowned. Because he needs to get his head together, to
make some decision on what he’s going to do.

RN:

Interesting. You mentioned in the previous interview that it’s
important to make Shakespeare not sound like Shakespeare, and
obviously part of that is the way you speak the words, but I’m also
interested in physically how an actor tells the story and whether
working with Javier [de Frutos, chroeographer], what sort of use
movement’s being put to?

KD:

Yeah, particularly having Javier, he’d sit in on scenes and he
has some wonderful physical takes on the scene, as opposed to the
language and the bogged-down-ness of that for an actor trying to
make sense of this language. I think Shakespeare is very much in
the body for any actor, because it’s a very physical language.
There’s lots of stuff talked about Shakespeare, about big,
intellectual language. It’s actually just words on a page, and it’s
actually very physical, you know, to do it really well you’ve got
to get it into your body, you know, it’s that kind of language.

RN:

And so are you developing a physicality of you guys all being
soldiers…?

KD:

Yeah, I think that comes as rehearsals go on, that kind of comes
and the more that you get that into yourself and in your body and,
certainly for me, in swords and going to be fighting and all that,
yeah, that kind of comes, that physicality which then, when you go
back on the whole thing after rehearsal, it really informs how you
move and how you do speak I suppose, yeah. They are one, they’re
not separate.

RN:

Well hopefully we’ll find out more about the England scene and
where Macduff’s character goes ultimately.

Hello and welcome to the Adopt an Actor podcasts for this
season’s production of Macbeth. I’m here with Keith Dunphy who’s
playing Macduff in this year’s production, and I’m just going to
jump straight in with what was your experience of Shakespeare like
at school.

Keith Dunphy:

Well, particularly my experience of Shakespeare was none. I got
into Shakespeare quite late in my life; I didn’t really have any
concept of Shakespeare until I was about 19 or 20, 'cause I left
school when I was very very young. So my experience of Shakespeare
was just by doing some monologues when I was starting out as an
actor. But my overall experience of Shakespeare only really
happened to me when I met a wonderful old tutor when I went to
RADA. That sort of opened up my world to Shakespeare really, so my
experience is quite late.

RN:

And how did you make that step into becoming an actor then after
leaving school?

KD:

Well I left school when I was 15, and then I did lots of
different stuff and then I met a group of people in Ireland
(obviously where I’m from!) that put me into some shows and stuff
like that and from there I just moved into working. At the time the
government were doing a scheme which allowed two people to work
with a professional theatre company and they were kind of paid a
minimum amount of wages. So that was actually really really good
for me, that’s how I joined a professional theatre company as a
really young guy and then I built it up from there.

And over the years I did lots of stuff with them, not just
acting but actually the whole gamut of the theatre. I learnt lots
of stuff, toured, and then I was kind of pushed into maybe going
away and trying to pursue maybe a final sort of training.

RN:

Have you done much Shakespeare in your professional life then? I
know you’ve been here before…

KD:

Yeah, I’ve been here before nine years ago, I think. I have done
a lot, it’s funny when I say I came to it quite late, after that a
lot of my career has been, I suppose, top-heavy with Shakespeare.
I’ve worked a lot, extensively with the Royal Shakespeare Company,
I’ve worked here at the Globe as well, and other Shakespeares,
Regents Park as well, so a lot of my career has been working with
the “Bard”, as they say.

RN:

Have you worked on Macbeth before, or were you familiar with
it?

KD:

Yeah, I knew of the play, yeah, I’ve worked on it before, yeah,
I knew of the play.

RN:

Have you had any impressions of what it’s about or what Macduff
is like as a character?

KD:

Well, I mean Macduff … I don’t even like to make too many
assumptions about a character even when I’ve finished doing a play,
which probably sounds strange. But I suppose he’s the archetypal
man of honour, he’s a right-hand man, he’s a family man and I think
that’s very important, I think, he’s a family man, the family come
first and King second, I think. But the most important thing I
think is that he’s ... the honour code of the times, whenever, I
mean, it’s hard for us to discuss honour now these days, we see
honour in a very different way. But, I think he’s a good man to
have on your side.

RN:

Moving into then the period just before rehearsals, do you
prefer to do research on your character before starting rehearsals,
or do you prefer to come with no assumptions?

KD:

I like to keep things very much open. The research I would do
for me - the way I call it is "survival tactics" with Shakespeare.
I basically read the play, have a think about it, not make too many
assumptions about it because I don’t think that’s a good thing, and
first and foremost the only work I would put in is understanding
what I’m saying, and if the rehearsal time periods sometimes are
short, it depends on different jobs you do, and houses you work in,
RSC or the Globe, but you won’t have time usually in rehearsals,
it’s good to do that work at home. We call it donkey work, dog
work, to really understand what you’re saying, and I mean really,
and that takes time to do, I think.

RN:

By that you do mean almost paraphrasing?

KD:

Absolutely, I do that a lot to try to make it not sound like
Shakespeare but that you’re talking I think That’s hard to do that
really well.

RN:

And then the last question really for this interview is: with
that first day of rehearsals a lot of people might not know
actually what that involves, so what did you get up to and how did
you find it?

KD:

Well first of all there’s obviously a great anticipation, you
meet new people, some people, you know, if you’re working around,
you meet some people you know, particularly this production I know
one or two guys I’ve worked with before which was lovely. So you’ll
have that anticipation of not knowing people, you’ll get an
introduction, you’ll meet people, you’ll get to know people, you’ll
be shown a model of the set, particularly with the Globe’s
wonderful made up model. The director will say her views or what
she feels, particularly with Lucy Bailey, you know, she’ll have a
particular way she wants the play to go. You’ll discuss stuff like
that. We have a choreographer [Javier De Frutos] on this one, he’s
a very very well known and very inventive choreographer, and his
meeting, with Lucy’s is very interesting so he was describing his
kind of way that he would work with actors as opposed to dancers,
which is very different. And then we did a warm-up that nearly
killed us all…

RN:

What did that involve?

KD:

Well, there’s a lad on this particular production. Michael
[Camp, Captain], that works a lot with Javier, and he’s also in
this show and he’s a fantastic actor and he’s a great physical
performer as well. So he’s taking the warm-ups, and he’s ... I
suppose the only term is to say is "ridiculously fit"! So his whole
method behind the madness is that he’s slowly over the last number
of weeks building up our stamina and strength in our bodies because
the Globe does require a very physical performance.

RN:

Wonderful, well hopefully we’ll hear more about that next week
when we actually get into rehearsals. Thank you very much.